Tim Fernholz asks if the congressional grilling of Goldman execs obscure the real solutions to the crisis:
Sen. Jon Tester will tell you that he is just a simple Montana farmer. He’s savvier than the image he presents, but nonetheless he played the role of the outraged populist well yesterday, joining Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma in interrogating four former and current Goldman Sachs employees. “It’s like we’re speaking a different language here,” Tester marveled at one point.
It was a marathon, 11-hour scolding of Wall Street by four representatives of middle America. The bankers did their best to play dumb, or at least confused, as the senators berated them about financial transactions not all of the bankers participated in and some of the senators didn’t understand. “Again, I’m trying to understand what the question is,” was a typical confession as the Goldman managers tried to explain themselves.